Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

Main Players•Zionists- Jews from across Europe and the

United States primarily.

•Palestinian- the Arab population of the Palestinian Mandate

•British- Desires geo-political positioning for trade and to coax the Jewish lobby into their camp.

•Newly Formed Arab States- see the Balfour Declaration as a clear violation of pan-arab sovereignty and use the Palestinian plight to invoke favor among their own population.

Palestinian Mandate

Jewish Oppression- Pogroms

Russia Poland

Jewish Oppression- Ghettos

Venice Poland

Zionism- Theodor Herzl

Zionist Congress

Balfour Declaration“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people, and will use

their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it

being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious

rights of existing non-jewish communities in Palestine, or the

rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Chaim Weizmann

“The Zionist objective was gradually to make Palestine as Jewish as England was English.”-

Weizmann

Legitimacy

•San Remo Conference (1920)

•League of Nations (1922)

Musa Kazim al-Husseini

Mufti of Jerusalem- Haj amin al-

Husseini

Kibbutzism

Haganah

David Ben Gurion

Mapai Party

Revisionist Zionism-

Jabotinsky

The Irgun and Begin

Wailing Wall

Shaw Commission

•Findings: Landless Class of Palestinian Arabs

•Fear of more Jewish settlement

•Recommendations: Passfield White Paper (1931)-

•British control of Jewish immigration

•U.S. and British Zionist Lobby => Rejected White Paper (creating the Black Paper)

Peel Commission

Findings and Recommendation

•The premise of the mandate was untenable

•A unitary state could not exist under the obligations of the Balfour Declaration

•The Mandate created antagonism between Jews and Arabs

•Mandate to be terminated

•Partition into two states

•Britain would continue to control Jerusalem

White Paper (1939)

•A Jewish state was not a policy of the British within the Palestinian Mandate.

•Limit Jewish immigration = cease in 5 years

•In 10 years, Palestine was to be granted independence.

WWII- Dillema

Intercommunal War